Coming soon to a laptop near you: 1.2TB hard drives

In the relentless bid to pursue ever greater aerial density on even smaller devices, Fujitsu will be announcing another breakthrough later this week related to perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.

In effect, the company has created ideally “ordered” alumina nanohole patterns for isolated bit-by-bit recording on a large disk area. This was achieved through a collaboration between Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Yamagata Fujitsu Ltd, as well as the Kanagawa Academy of Science and Technology.

According to PC World:

… Fujitsu says it has successfully demonstrated the ability to perform basic read/write capability of each individual nanoholes of the patterned media using a special flying head on a rotating disk.

Noted Joel Hagberg, vice president of business development at Fujitsu Computer Products of America, this breakthrough could well lead the company to produce hard drives with storage capacities of up to 1.2TB on a two-platter, 2.5-inch drive as soon as 2010.

More than just having mega-sized laptop hard drives, this research will certainly benefit the server room as well. This is especially true with the shift towards 2.5-inch SAS hard drives, led by vendors such as Hewlett Packard.

You can read the original PC World article here: Coming to Your Laptop: 1.2TB Hard Drives.